Healthcare procedures, facilities, equipment and knowledge have advanced rapidly and significantly over the centuries. Patient outcomes have improved, and many injuries and diseases that would have been fatal in earlier times are now treated and cured as a matter of course.
These changes in prognosis for the most serious maladies cause a reshuffling among other causes and contributors to death and disease. When injuries themselves were commonly fatal, differences in sterilization and sanitation procedures were relatively inconsequential. Now that many injuries can be treated effectively, though, infections acquired during treatment and convalescence can turn out to be a significant factor in overall outcomes. This is especially true of hospital-acquired infections: because hospital facilities, personnel and patients experience increased antibacterial procedures (e.g., autoclaving, hand-washing and antibiotic courses), bacterial populations there are subjected to strong selection pressure, and difficult-to-treat infections have become more common.
These “superbug” pathogens (e.g., Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, “MRSA”) can be spread among hospital patients by improperly- or inadequately-sanitized equipment, but a common vector is the hands of healthcare providers, who may touch or handle patients or equipment, then inadvertently transfer pathogens an uninfected patient by neglecting to follow recommended or required hand-sanitation procedures.
Hand sanitation compliance is known to be an effective target for hospital process improvement. Studies often show compliance rates below 50%. Prior-art approaches to improve compliance tend to fall into two classes: education (via seminars, personnel directives, “reminder” posters and literature, etc.) and technological (via interlocks connecting sanitation activity to premises access—e.g., a door lock will not open unless the sanitation procedure is completed). Technological approaches tend to be expensive, complicated and inconvenient in direct proportion to their reliability; no such approach is widely adopted and successful. Education is inexpensive, but of limited efficacy against habitual offenders.
An inexpensive approach that is less intrusive but more effective may be of significant value in this field.